Downtown at last!

I finally got to go to downtown Milwaukee last night! Yippee! We went out to dinner and to see the play, “Well” at the Broadway Theatre with friends of ours.
Driving into downtown is a bit exciting these days. The new downtown interchange, that $800 million dollar, four-year project has been completed and is open for traffic. It’s kind of attractive, in an it-will-have-to-do-because-we-don’t-have-decent-public-transportation sort of way. I’d recommend that you all take an evening and just ride around that interchange, testing in which lane you want to be to go where you want to go.

Not wanting to end up in Bay View or Fox Point, we dumped off at the former Railroad Station, now the Multi-modal Station (la-tee-dah), to go to the Third Ward. That worked, though we were on city streets for a ways. It seems that the Plankinton Road exit only goes north now. Maybe. I’m not sure.

My job for the evening was to find a place for dinner, preferably not too far from the Broadway Theatre. I did my research on line and found there are 17 restaurants in the Third Ward in which I might consider eating dinner. They all looked soooo sophisticated and soooo not suburban chains, I wanted to try them all. So.. While in the presence of our friends, I made a proposal that we go to one of them every other week – and I’ll review them in my blog. I’ll bet you’d really like to know what I think of the restaurants in the Third Ward. I am an expert at this, you know. I reviewed all the restaurants on Bluemound Road last fall, while my Most Beautiful Kitchen in Brookfield was being created.

So it was decided. Even The Man With the Tight Wallet didn’t object to going out with these good friends every other week. He loves to talk sports with the wife of this couple and projects with the husband. That’s worth a couple of bucks.

Today I will review Swig, where we almost didn’t get to eat last night. Yep. Our visit was a bit of a disaster for the restaurant, and I’m sure if they knew I was reviewing our dinner last night for my masses of dinner-going blog-readers, they’d be quaking in their aprons.

I chose Swig because it is only a block from the Broadway Theatre. We parked in the Third Ward parking structure and arrived at Swig at 6:15, with plenty of time for dinner before the play at 7:30. Our wine order was placed fairly quickly. We did wait longer than you’d think was necessary for our wine to be served. Meanwhile we perused the delicious-looking items on the menu. Swig specializes in “small plates,” which are smaller servings of what would otherwise be main dishes. Our waiter, Steve, told us that often four diners order six small plates and share them.

It did take us a bit of time to decide which of the items to order. But though Steve knew about our theater schedule, he didn’t arrive to take our food orders until about 6:35. It was obvious he had too many tables to serve.

We ordered 7 small plates. I’ll list them so you can read how tempting they all sound. There was the Classic Bruschetta, Tempura Snap Peas with tarragon sour cream, Lobster Stuffed Roasted Poblano Pepper, Crab Cakes, Three Cheese Ravioli, Sesame Beef Tenderloin Skewers, and Chicken Skewers. Now wouldn’t you just LOVE to taste all those? Just to give you an idea of prices, the total of all 7 of those items would have been $72.25. Notice the “would have been...”

Time passed. No food. More time. We queried Steve as he rushed past our table. He was polite, friendly even, but... No food. Finally three of the plates, the Lobster, the Beef and the Chicken, arrived at about 7:05. YIKES! They were delicious - I think. We wolfed that food down, keeping our eyes peeled for the remainder of our order.

The other four items never arrived. Steve showed up with our bill at 7:15, apologizing that the kitchen had gotten so backed up with last minute people trying to make it to the theater, they just couldn’t get the rest of our order done in time.

There were only three other tables occupied when we arrived. When Steve accepted our order, the kitchen should have completed it and, if necessary, told the later arrivals that they couldn’t be served in time for the theater.

I’d like to go back to try the items we missed and others on the menu that sounded tempting. But NEVER will we eat at Swig again when we’re on a schedule.

At least The Man Who Can Sleep Anywhere (and often does) was not too stuffed to stay awake through an entire theater performance. I thought the play was interesting, with an excellent cast. The mother/adult daughter relationship was very familiar, from both sides of the generational divide.

Then it was time to leave downtown. Drat. Wouldn’t it be fun to own a condo down there? In addition to my house and gardens, of course. Anyway, we hopped back on the Freeway at Jackson Street, which was a lucky choice. It appears that the 6th St on-ramp may be gone, and I’m not sure about getting on at Marquette Univ. I’m telling The Man that we need to drive downtown more often for a while, just to practice these new roads.

You don’t think that’s TOO transparent, do you?

Stirring the Pot